What´s the best fly for carp?

Good question. Like many good questions the answer is not straightforward. In fact it doesn´t have an answer at all. The truth is carp are very adaptable and they do what fish do best, which is to feed on whatever is available and, given the choice, the source of food that provides the most nutrition for the effort required to obtain it. Carp, just like the rest of us, want the most bang for their buck.

If you asked a seasoned trout fisherman what the best fly for trout is you will get a deluge of answers. You will get suggested patterns ranging from diminutive midges through to large streamers and Chernobyl Ants that look like the Titanic but have greater inherent buoyancy. The real answer to the question, unsatisfactory as it may be, is “it depends.” And it is the things that it depends on that make fly fishing so absorbing.

The same is true of carp. On my local river I would normally run with a little nymph. It would probably not be bigger than a size 8 and, likely, much smaller. I fish for carp and barbel with the same fly and so more often than not it might be about size 14 or 12. A little bit of weight is helpful so you can try to guide the fly a little way in front of the fish and drop it down in front of him (or her!)

On big lakes where there are a lot of shoaling fish and the carp take them you would probably be much better off with something like a woolly bugger of an appropriate size.

In Extremadura as we tackled up to fish for carp Colin McLachlan suggested I try a little deer hair hopper pattern which had been successful for him and he was kind enough to give me one. As it happens, the carp were not playing ball and the hopper was not working its magic. Later Dave Felce came along and offered me a pretty chunky weighted fly with rubber legs. He had been successful with this earlier in the week. It occurred to me as I bit off the hopper and replaced it with its successor that the two flies could hardly have been more different.

So which was the better fly – the hopper or the rubbery thing? The truth is neither worked! The carp were ignoring everything we threw at them (with the honourable exception of Colin who fooled one) It turned out that they were preoccupied with spawning.

So maybe the answer to the question “what´s the best fly for carp?” is “it depends” to which we can add a little addendum: “unless they have sex on the brain in which case you may as well just head off to the nearest bar and shout yourself a beer!”

Colin´s hopper

Dave´s rubbery “beast.” This carried plenty of ballast and was plenty lively when twitched back.

This is the kind of thing I would use on the local river. There´s nothing magical about it but it will work as well as anything most of the time.